Lavas Magmas - Acts of Worship CDr+DVDr (Existest Establishment)
From what I've managed to understand, Lavas Magmas is the project of one Luis Gonzalez from Portland. And this is yet another new unit for me that I'm listening to because of Existence Establishment label. Release comes in colorful and sturdy DIY packaging with CDr and DVDr inside. In DVD disc there are three videos with more than half an hour of visualizations, experimental cinema, video collages or whatever it should be called. I watched the first video Reaktor I: Organopticon rather apathetically because the sound was not that interesting and the video did not draw my attention too, but when it passed 10 minute or so mark, the sound got more intense and the video - more interesting. Imagery in these short movies is mostly found, stolen or filmed in almost all continents of the world - from pornography to melancholic views of the forest. Anyways, two remaining videos got me much faster than the first one. Into the Void was somewhat dark and oppressive track with gloomy sights and you can even hear some serious rudiments of noise in Black Friday with crowds of consumers in the video (if I understand it correctly, this one is about all that shopping madness). Nice visual material while preparing to listen to some sounds. There are almost 40 minutes of music on the disc. These are mostly field recordings, rather skillfully mixed with loops, synth sounds, guitar and who knows what else. It is music of loneliness and distorted melancholy. It's possible to describe this disc as dark ambient, but it would not entirely true. Dark mood of the disc is revealed by playing around with stereo sounds, nicely merging synth notes and good quality records of surroundings, and thus creating depressive story from under the layer of metal junk. I truly adore how dynamically themes are developed, notwithstanding harmony and subtlety. This is one of the reasons why this album is so cold and somewhat painful. Such approach to sound is felt especially well in the longest track of the album Orgonopticon with 16+ minutes of depressive mood of solitude in constantly evolving sound that remains interesting throughout the whole track. The most boring and bleak track in the disc is Desiring-Stupor. Field recordings and a layer of synth or noise generator, going nowhere for 3 minutes. But apart from that I have only good words to say about this album. Solid release with good sound and video material. If someone wants to familiarize with the video works, you can easily find them in the internet. I think by doing that you'll also more easily understand what I was writing here about. Are 50 copies not too few? Well, perhaps the label knows best.
RL:ZZ - Fragments CS (Phage Tapes)
This supposedly one-time project, founded only in 2012, already released 2 albums in labels with truly great reputation - Unrest and Phage Tapes. By that they not only prolonged their existence, but also made it really ambitiously, clearly showing that they don't lack ideas, sounds and means to express them. This duo consists of Ryan Lipynsky (participating in various metal bands most famous of them being Unearthly Trance) and Andy Lippoldt who plays funeral doom in his one man band Persistence in Mourning. He also plays in Winters in Osaka etc. And I'm really glad to say that for some time already, when I hear ambient project which is connected to people from metal scene, it does not mean that it will be cheap synth melodies or intro type "dark songs" at best. If this is still the case, then I'm glad that I have encountered such sort of albums very rarely lately. This tape is truly amazing soundtrack for a dark, slightly depressing and cold evening of winter. There are two long tracks on each side of the tape. After the N-th listening session I'm lost which side is which, but it's not that important. Sound on both sides is quite alike. The basis of these tracks is field recordings that blend with piano and violin sounds, voice, guitar etc. very smoothly. Tracks, covered with huge mantle of reverb, opens in finite, isolated space, with the listener on one side and weird distorted show, slowly happening on the other. This is not one of these cold and pleasant records, dealing with visions of lonely trees and frosty branches etc. This one is the vision of damp and moldy basement with distant fragments of bizarre reality and music, illuminated in dim light. I think it is the end of the first side where the tension and anxiety rises and you can hear rudiments of rhythm. After turning sides and pressing play you are entering the realm with gusts of wind, distant piano sounds that are not dissonant though don't have any adhesive melody, fragments of violin and voice. All this go together so well and create such an amazing mood that I wish it would continue as long as possible. So that you could wander around in dark and moist spaces, interrupting consciousness with shatters of reality and sickness. Float further with fragile piano melodies and find a way back with violin sounds. This one is really amazing record. Musical masterpiece, crafted with exceptional taste. I highly recommend this work and you shouldn't forget the title of this project for quite some time.
Wince - Nerves CS (Skeleton Dust Recordings)
Wince has released some truly great releases in the last few years. Some people online even began to wonder why this noiser is still without a proper vinyl release and offering labels that could do that. Time will show if that will happen and when will that be, but I'm following Wince for quite some time myself and this artist still has to disappoint me. Nerves is the album from 2011, released via USA's Skeleton Dust label (2012 were very barren for Wince. A split with SSRI and a little more activities with other projects). Nice cover with not obligatory collage of micro and macro flora etc. The tape starts from the title song Nerves - worship of metal sounds without burying them under effects too much. Pleasant texture, that gets harsher and more distorted towards the end of the track. Finally the peak is reached and it ends. The second track on A side, Marine, leans towards more traditional harsh noise sound and fully justifies the title. This is the layered sea of noise, heavily waving and pressing down with its expanse. Several layers of noise are suppressed closely so that no sound would be too far from the upper level of sound. All this is left to evolve seemingly itself under the almost unchanging shell of noise. On B side there is one and quite different track. Found a Blade - waving, heterogeneous and chaotic noise creature, stretching up to the end of the tape. There are places where sound almost disappear and becomes barely audible distorted crackling, but then the level rises and strikes with heaviness of feedbacks and broken uproar. But not for long. The wave goes away and you are left with the part where noise is not allowed to leave the barriers of distortion. Quite an uncomfortable feeling. As if watching the animal who is trying to escape from the chain. This side is nice in the developing pictures of sound and you can observe how they change - suddenly becoming active to the maximum, and then releasing the tension. But for me it is interesting from the exploring and inquisitive side of music listening. I mean when you listen to albums, trying to find some interesting decisions and innovations and you are not motivated just to feel listening pleasure. To say it in a simpler way - A side is more pleasant to listen to and B side is more interesting for exploration and acknowledgment. And when you add these up, you get a good release, which truly shows how diverse, lovely and interesting can be good quality noise. Album is recommended for those who likes good harsh nose and not recommended for those who are looking for goals, structures and innovations in every step they take. Good job.
Umpio - Junk Electronix vol. I CD (Nekorekords / Ahky)
While communicating with Mr. Umpio some time ago and discussing various things noise, including reviews, a rather disappointed issue was expressed, that there were loads of Junk Electronix vol I promo copies sent out and still there is not a single review of this album. I felt a little ashamed myself since I've listened to it after receiving the CD and put it in the shelf "for the future". So now it's a very good time "for the future". Umpio is one of results of a Pentti Dassum being active in music and antimusic for 20 years. It has been materialized to such outlet and proper physical releases only a few years ago. Junk Electronix is one of the compilations (like Opium Electronix which is oriented more towards atmospheric and densely textured sounds or Dub Electronix about which I have no idea) so intuitively one would expect junk nose. But it's not like that. Junk electronix as it is explained on the CD cover, is Pentti's self-made instruments, nonstruments and so on that were used to record all the tracks in this album. Album consists of a little more than 20 minutes of broken, cut though quite orderly and purposeful noise, divided into 8 tracks. 10 minutes at the end of the album is different - one long, darker track, contrasting with all the things before. First 20 minutes sounds like a cheerful and non-obligatory playing around with sounds and it's truly great - few layers of looped rhythms, metal percussions, cut-ups etc. No aggression, just good and quality noise. I like the feeling of freedom and absolute control (that's where the feeling of freedom appears from most likely) in these tracks. It seems that sounds are free to evolve and deviate from the primary impulse however they wish, but at the same time, they are lined up in neat and accurate compositions and this is one of the things why my ears and heart rejoice when I'm listening to his works. Some noisers are trying so hard to make something "interesting" and they fail miserably while Mr. Umpio touches a pile of junk and miracle happens. As I've mentioned already, the last track is a little different. If you could spent those first 20 minutes looking at packaging of the album and imagining seemingly chaotic movement of electronic impulses on the board, this last track is not so calmly secure. Absolutely different atmosphere and weird feeling after light tracks, but looking at the perspective of the album, it's effective. Great work in the sense of length, sound variety, changes of mood and so on. Recommended. Kiitos.
K.K.Null + Scumearth - K.K.Null + Scumearth CD (Phage Tapes, RONF Records)
I've been listening to this album for quite some time already and still I don't seem to get even closer to understanding it. Disc contains almost 50 minutes of sounds and is placed in a neat, screenprinted arigato pack, covered with fancy patterns, schemes or something like that. There are 20 minutes of sound from Japan, Spain and 10 minute long joint track. Even a person who is not too much into noise, most likely heard K.K.Null or Zeni Geva names. Several albums of the latter progressive hardcore band, started by Kazuyuki Kishino, were even produced by legendary Nirvana's producer Steve Albini and the band overall was quite well acknowledged worldwide. K.K.Null is one of the most famous names in Japanese noise scene together with Hijokaidan, Merzbow (they were playing together for some time) and so on. So after a wave of praise, I must admit that neither Zeni Geva nor K.K.Null were never those projects that I would be too excited about though I started to get used to and even like that pure experimental sound of K.K.Null while listening to this album. His input to the disc is one long 20 minutes track. There is so much happening during these minutes and so much to hear and witness that even quite a big part of double CDs do not have that much varied sonic information in them. It feels like observation of a scientific experiment. It is not something that you feel, that is particularly beautiful or stimulating. No. But it is very interesting. Complex sound structures, collages with parrot voice transforming into orderly curves of noise generator output; human words, suddenly being covered with glitch and so on. It's a leaping, rising and sinking, continually evolving in weirdest formulas track, not divided into separate pieces though hardly continuous. Scumearth is easier to understand. He deals with more emotional side of sound. Comparing his 3 tracks to the first 20 minutes of the album, his output sounds very simple and predictable. Mainly it's darkened buzzing of noise generators, existing somewhere between harsh noise, ambient and experimental. The last track seems weakest of all. When you take tracks of Japanese and Spanish artists, it is interesting in one way or another, but when you have their rather different outputs mixed together, you get a meal with good ingredients, but not too tasty final result. All in all it's an interesting disc with two pretty different musicians. It's quite weird though - after I started listening to this album, I liked Scumearth far more than K.K.Null, but the more I listened to it, the more interested seemed K.K.Null and the bleaker tracks of Scumearth. It's difficult to find a balance in this disc, but the attempt was well worth the time.
Hands To - Artiment 2xCDr (Impulsy Stetoskopu)
Musique concrete in the context of music is like a cozy and warm place at home. You wouldn't want to stay there for too long, but after being away and returning, you are always going there to rest. It's similar for me with musique concrete - I couldn't listen to it all the time, but these moments when I get a chance to - they are really nice. Of course maybe I'm so lucky to get only well done releases, who knows. As you might have understood from this introduction, Artiment is one of those pleasant and nice albums. Hands To is Jeph Jerman. I reviewed his releases several times already. It's a person who lives in a world full of music and from time to time he presents his worldview (or worldsound) in concentrated dose for those who are not able to analyze their surroundings that well. Artiment was a double tape, released in 1989 in Jeph's own label Big Body Parts. 20 years later Impulsy Stetoskopu rereleased remastered version in 2 CDrs that I'm listening to right now. There are couple of hours of soft field recordings and pirated radio transmissions recorded in HCA (whatever that could be) in these discs. The first disc consists of filthy, formless and barely tangible though very pleasant recordings. It's a feeling of wide space, distant humming of city and wind and insignificant presence of a man, piercing the cloud of sound from time to time. Soothing freshness. The last track is slightly different - more intense lo-fi noise, constructed from field recordings. Though the track is noisier, but it fits the whole picture very well. It seems that more concrete recordings were collected in the second disc. There is not so much of formless calmness and more details, sudden sound deviations, human voices and other brighter environmental elements in it. The same wide space, but if you could imagine a soothing dessert while listening to the first disc, the second sounds like pressing underwater depth. Once again my attention is drawn by the last track, which lasts for more than 20 minutes and develops in several stages, diverging towards more concrete sounds, but involuntarily returning to abstraction. The remark on the cover says that these discs might be combined and played together. This opens possibilities to experiment for yourself and create your own music. Sometimes it can bring you to beautiful results. Without experimenting too much I simply played both discs from the beginning and these barely unnoticeable differences between discs that I've mentioned before, disappear and well balanced, interesting surrealistic painting with trains, human voices, wind and nature sounds from 1989 is formed. Having in mind that all this is complemented by mild drone of the city that lives in the year 2013, I start to feel like travelling spaces and time. It's a record that is interesting and stimulating fantasy, where the joy of discovery travels hand in hand with sound world of Jeph Jerman.
Sexterminator 69 - Violazione Di Sepolcro CDr (Toxic Industries)
Harsh noise wall as a style has gave up popularity, that has been reached a few years back when day by day new projects were born, new walls released and practically every single sentence about HNW on the internet ended up in huge discussions about the style and so on. It's calmer in 2013. New projects are quite seldom and mainly people, most dedicated to the style and conception remained active in the scene. Anyways, the speed of their releases slowed down and normalized and those who tried to jump on the wave of imaginary popularity are disappearing. To say it in short - everything goes back to normal. One of those currently not active projects released a disc that I'm reviewing now. Sexterminator 69 was a HNW project from Italy, active in 2010-2011. Andrea Laurenti, apart from Sexterminator 69, also played in pornogrind band Bukkake Violence Kommando (the latter is silent for a few years now too). There are 4 tracks on the disc with overall playing time of 45 minutes. Though the sound is described as HNW in promo text, it's very conditional term because these 4 tracks are quite moving and changing. I wouldn't even say that there are any dominating sound layers in these tracks, but if there are - it's not statics. The first track after a few seconds of crackling jumps straight into the pool of massive and dense textures that point towards harsh noise wall. But soon after it becomes clear that only one of all these sound layers is static and truly "wally" and it is hiding deeper and not too audible at first. Other layers of sounds are quite agile. There are parts in other tracks where this is even more evident - static sound layers becomes muted and you are left with pedal harsh noise cracklings. I don't know about other albums of Sexterminator 69, but this one can be placed somewhere in between harsh noise wall and rather weak pedal harsh noise. It's weak because sound textures are the same in all the tracks. Even if you have only one pedal you can get the sound quite varied for a 45 minutes album. Now it sounds as if statics has been recorded with lows on full with a little bit of mids and other, more moving layers has been recorded without lows, with mids and highs turned to full. Quite a lot of people know how fuzz sounds and when it is presented as an album for your listening pleasure, it's just boring. After the first or second spin there is nothing to be heard on the album. Of course the situation itself is weird. How could you be interested in listening to an hour length of unmoving statics, but bored while hearing such sounds, but it is like that for me. Well, I've got to know the project, thanks for that and now this CDr goes to the shelf without big chances to return back to the player any time soon.
